


The Drift

by An_English_Suitcase



Category: Original Work
Genre: Mother-Son Relationship, Single Parents, Suicide, emotionally vacant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-16 06:58:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/859205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/An_English_Suitcase/pseuds/An_English_Suitcase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watching the man skydive from space turns out to be anticlimactic and you think of what it would be like to fall that far. Not knowing whether or not you would pull your parachute in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Drift

**Author's Note:**

> Just something I wrote for a second-person 700-1000 word prompt for a creative writing class.

The roof of the apartment towers high over the street below, and everything looks so small from above and it makes you feel powerful. There is no guard rail and you think that maybe there should be because there are often kids who run around here; and you know that your son has been up with some of his friends, drinking the Jim Beam you keep under the sink in your bathroom. It would be so easy for them to just pitch over the edge. You wonder, not for the first time, how it would be if you went over, completely weightless as you fell. How you would feel alive again. You pay the sky a last glance before turning and making your way back into your apartment where your son informs you that your sister, who no longer lives here, called wanting to know how you were and what you were doing and if you’ve been eating okay. He looks earnest as he delivers her message, eyes watching you a little warily as you’ve noticed they always do after you’ve been out on the roof.

You smile, pat him on the arm, ask him if he’d like to watch the Austrian break the record for skydiving. He’s jumping from space, you tell him. He nods, pats you back and asks if you’d like any tea. You do and he fumbles around the kitchen for a moment, filling the pot with water as you flip through the channels on the television.  
You ask him how school was, and did he pass his biology test, and how his girlfriend is. School was fine, he passed his test, and his girlfriend broke up with him during lunch. He sits down a little heavily smiling when you tell him that there are plenty of fish in the sea. You cluck in the back of your throat, accepting the tea as he gives it to you, being careful not to spill.

Watching the man skydive from space turns out to be anticlimactic and you think of what it would be like to fall that far. Not knowing whether or not you would pull your parachute in time. Hitting the ground hard enough to scatter yourself all over whatever you happened to have been aiming for. You think the shock might kill you before you even touched the ground. You say this to your son, he smiles, looking away from his phone, and says he is sure it would be just like that.  
After the two of you have finished watching an episode of Frasier he gets up, tells you that he is going to meet with some friends, says not to worry. That he’ll call when he gets there and be home by eleven. He asks you if you’d rather he stay, you can hear the concern in his voice. You don’t want that, you wave him off.  
But it’s lonely with him gone; you don’t know what to do. Tottering around the house you water the plants, make your bed, and try to organize the scattered issues of Cosmo that cover your coffee table. You read them for the sex advice. It’s enough for twenty minutes of activity. Then you’re left feeling listless again. You consider fixing another cup of tea; decide that the caffeine will only keep you wake. So instead you settle down with an abused paper back copy of some book your son says you’d like. Something about slaughter houses, there are five of them, you think. But it isn’t enough to hold your attention, you don’t like it, it makes you sad and it has nothing at all to do with slaughter houses. 

It’s no surprise that you find yourself back on the roof. It’s different now that time has passed and the sky has darkened. There are new people milling about below, you can catch snippets of color in the otherwise bland crowd. A blue coat here, a green hat there, little shards of brightness off to do important things.  
As you sit, legs dangling over the edge, you think of your son who is coming home at eleven. You’re not sure what time it is, but you’re pretty certain that it’s not eleven. You laugh at how uneventful your life has become. That you are waiting for your son to come home in order to have something to do. You used to go out. You had friends; you went to movies, danced on tables, you drank. It doesn’t even seem that long ago. And yet still, here you are, sitting on a rooftop watching as the world goes by without you. You look down, between your legs; the ocean of bodies has thinned, and hardly anyone is walking by your apartment now.  
The Austrian skydiver could never jump off your building. It isn’t tall enough; he’d have to pull his chute before he even jumped. And what kind of record would that set? No one would care. It wasn’t jumping from space after all. You think that if you jumped people would care. You would do it without a chute. It would be impressive, you would be free falling. 

You think of how easy it would be, to just inch yourself off the edge until weightlessness took you. Or maybe you wouldn’t inch. Maybe you would shove off, all in one powerful thrust, no taking it back, letting the strong pull of gravity drift you down.

Smiling, eyes closed, and it feels exactly how you thought it would.


End file.
